With two films about the Indonesian genocide, the Oscar-nominated ‘The Act of Killing’ and this month’s ‘The Look of Silence,’ director Joshua Oppenheimer — aided by an anonymous codirector — shines light on an unspeakable tragedy

In 2011, 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was killed in his upstate New York home. Years passed with no arrest, and now Nick Hillary, a former college soccer coach and an ex-boyfriend of Phillips’s mother, awaits trial on a murder charge. But Hillary and a vocal group of supporters say that he has been wrongfully accused.

Make Your Own Oscar Whisper Campaign

The bad news: With final ballots due by 5 p.m. on February 21 and the ceremony following less than a week later, time is running out for Oscar campaigners to sway susceptible AMPAS voters. The good news: In what’s largely considered a mediocre year at the movies, that’s still plenty of time for a savvy player to affect the outcome of many of the hotly contested, big-ticket categories. And so, as a service to anyone with access to a waffling Academy member and a desire to influence any of the major races, we’ve compiled these helpful talking points on all of the biggest nominees. With a well-timed phone call or a few seemingly off-the-cuff remarks over cocktails, you, too, can launch your own last-minute whisper campaign!

Best Picture

The Artist

“There was supposed to be sound, they just forgot. Sloppy work, you can’t reward that.”

“I just overheard Harvey Weinstein bragging, ‘I’ve got all these gullible, unsophisticated motherfuckers to vote for a stuttering king and a mute French dancer. I can sell anything! Next year, I think I’ll do ‘blind ASL teacher.'”

“Clooney’s charming and everything, but we’re supposed to sympathize with an old-money hundred-milllionaire in a Hawaiian shirt who screams at his comatose wife? Kind of 1-percenter misogynist, if you ask me.”

“Shaggy carries this movie.”

“Shaggy is in this movie.”

“Hawaii, really? Put it in the Florida Panhandle or Appalachia and then we’ll talk.”

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Too soon. I’m not sure the country’s quite ready to Hanks up 9/11.”

“When you see a cute, precocious kid like that, it’s pretty much impossible not to think he’s talking to secretly dead people. Waiting for that reveal that never comes is really distracting.”

“I don’t know how you don’t do this one in 3-D. Why not use all the modern storytelling tools in your arsenal?”

The Help

“Granted, some of the performances were great. Really, really great. But there’s more to a Best Picture than just ‘great performances.'”

“Oprah didn’t feel the script was strong enough to produce it herself, so she had her interior decorator do it.”

“As a white person, I’m not entirely comfortable with being depicted as having solved racism in the South. There are some guilt issues there we should maybe all work through together.”

“That shit pie wasn’t even locally sourced. I don’t care what they tell you, they shipped it in from a Du-par’s in Tarzana.”

Hugo

“There’s ‘minor Scorsese’ and then there’s a 3-D movie about a French kid trying to put a rusty robot back together while being chased around a train station by a gimpy Borat.”

“I kept waiting for the scene where Ben Kingsley blows out Sacha Baron Cohen’s brains to ‘Gimme Shelter,’ but it never came. Disappointing.”

“I found it kind of hard to appreciate the moving homage to cinematic history while vomiting my guts out from 3-D-induced vertigo.”

Midnight in Paris

“Woody Allen’s greatest success made $2 million less than Water for Elephants.“

“If we’re going to do the ‘career achievement’ thing, maybe we wait another year or two. We don’t want him to feel like he doesn’t still have good work left in him.”

Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It’s totally unfair of me to hold this against him, but doesn’t it feel like Morgan Freeman passed on this role? This category’s way too strong to vote for a second choice.”

“This is Plummer’s year to get a makeup award. Tough break for Max, but that’s how the system works.”

Best Supporting Actress

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

“Harvey told me he didn’t promise her anything this time, so I can’t burn this vote on her.”

“She’s beautiful, no doubt. And very talented. We’ll be seeing more of her. But that dog took my breath away! That’s the story of the Supporting Acting categories, if you ask me.”

Jessica Chastain, The Help

“I have this rule: If Bryce Dallas Howard is in the same movie and I can’t tell you apart, I can’t vote for you. Blame the casting people, fine, but that’s how it is.”

“I wanted to get drawn into the performance, I really did. But GOD, every time those enormous stunt-knockers bounced into the frame, it pulled me right out.”

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

“A fearless, hilarious performance. But wasn’t it even MORE fearless to be the one who pooped in the middle of a busy street, instead of the relative safety of a bridal shop sink? Something to think about.”

“Oh, so now we’re nominating everyone in a movie who does the cross-dressing thing? Got it.”

“The Academy’s not quite ready for a cross-dressing sweep. Maybe soon, but not this year. We have more work to do.”

Octavia Spencer, The Help

“This is Viola Davis’ year. The movie’s not strong enough to sweep the acting awards.”

“Look, if there’s going to be a pie full of human excrement in the scene, you’ve GOT to underplay it a little. You can’t go big there, you just can’t. Let the pie do the work.”

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

“He was so successful recreating the magic of the silent era that he just reminded me how wonderful modern moviemaking is. So that’s one in Scorsese’s column, I think.”

“This is just a rumor, so don’t hold me to it, but I’ve heard he directed silent propaganda films in Vichy France. Allegedly Harvey Weinstein bought them all up and had them destroyed. He’s only 44? Look, I heard what I heard.”

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

“I don’t want to call it ‘Oscar cheating’ by casting George Clooney, but you have to admit, it’s sort of taking the easy way out there.”

“We should probably hold our votes for Nebraska. It’s going to be in black and white, that feels like a slam dunk for the award in a year or two. If anything, there are too many colors in this one.”

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

“Didn’t we just give him a ‘lifetime achievement’ Oscar for The Departed? I know it’s our fault for doing it prematurely, but you can’t win two of those. We had no idea a film this awardsy was still coming.”

“After the Woody Allen movie, I was a little too ‘Paris-ed out’ to fully appreciate this one. There’s only so much intoxicating romance a place can handle in a single movie year.”

“Ugh, if he wins and bothers to show up, he’s going to give one of those SUPER BORING speeches about how art isn’t a competition and he wants to share it with every person who’s ever picked up a camera and tried to make something. [PANTOMIME BLOWING YOUR BRAIN OUT] No way, I’m not sitting through that magnanimous integrity bullshit.”

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